Thank you so much for your good letter. Of course you are altogether too kind in what you say about the clinic at the Boston City Hospital and the part I have played in its development, but you set me up and stimulate me to write you at some length about the problems that many of us who are teaching clinical medicine have on our minds--Whither are we tending and what ought our aim to be? I have tried recently, without much success, to formulate a very brief statement as to the type of clinic I wanted to develop at the Boston City Hospital and I am glad to be encouraged to try my hand at the subject rather more in detail. First of all, I do not think we can or should all aim at having the same type of medical clinic. This must depend in part on local conditions. Thus you, in a university hospital, completely under your own control, have a very different problem and will produce something quite different from what I, a cog in a great municipal hospital, can produce. Each has its own advantages and its disadvantages. In part, moreover, the type of clinic will reflect the personality and interests of the chief, and the whole character of the clinic may alter when a new chief is put in charge of it. One of the first problems to be considered is the kind of man who ought to be selected as professor of medicine. I quite agree with you that the requirements which are now generally put forward are so impossible to fulfil that they become almost ludicrous. May we perhaps take pride in the fact that we have been called to fill the shoes of such supermen even if we do rattle around in them! When a professorship falls open, the committee in charge of filling the position usually says somewhat naïvely that it is looking for a man who has had an intensive scientific training, has done important research, is a good administrator, is a competent teacher, and finally has had clinical experience. We have heard this string of specifications so often that they are becoming rather hackneyed. Such a man is, of course, almost impossible to find, and I have been wondering where the ideal originated. I think it results from the fact that in recent years--since what we may call the Reformation--the selection of professors of clinical medicine has been more and more influenced by laymen and by professors of nonclinical subjects. Both may be excellent pedagogues and experts on education and yet fail to grasp the difficulties and complexities which confront this particular type of position. Thus the administration of the department of medicine, with its large teaching and clinical staff, its responsibility for the welfare of a considerable number of patients, its interrelations with the hospital administration and its subdepartments (social service, dietetics, physical therapy) is a very different thing from the administration of a department of physiology or biologic chemistry. It is all very well to say that the professor should delegate most of